Excerpt: This whole endeavor straight down to an out-of-nowhere implication of lesbianism reeks of male fantasy feigning feminist agenda. I hope Huppert gets a nomination because she plays this horrible creature with such fire, but I also hope she doesn’t so the film can fade away from our consciousness.

Excerpt: If you’ve see erotic thrillers from the ’80s or ’90s, including Verhoeven’s own Basic Instinct, you’ve seen something as scandalous as Elle. Hell, if you watched General Hospital in the late ’70s/early ’80s, you’ve seen worse.